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Equities Open Week Bearish

Posted by Finintell on Wednesday, 30 December 2015

The Nigerian Equities market opened the last trading week of the year on a negative note. Accordingly, the All Share Index (ASI) eased 0.4% to close at 26,763.2pts. YtD loss worsened to 22.8% bringing market capitalization to N9.2tn. Performance of the market was broadly dragged by activities in GTBANK (-3.4%), and WAPCO (-4.4%). We observed a spike in market activity, as aggregate volume and value traded advanced 768.8% and 129.2% to 1.3bn units and N3.6bn respectively. A further inspection indicated that this was due to a huge volume of transaction in STERLINGBANK which contributed 40.6% and 25.7% of market volume and value trade today.

FORTE OIL Drives Gains in the Oil & Gas IndexPerformance across sectors mirrored that of the broader index as all sector indicators but the Oil & Gas index closed lower. Driven by bullish sentiment in FORTE OIL (+9.9%) and MOBIL (+4.9%), the Oil & Gas sector index rose 5.2%. The Industrial Goods index led sector laggards, down 2.0% on declines in WAPCO (-4.4%) and DANGCEM (-0.3). The Consumer Goods index trailed with a 1.3% depreciation due to losses in UNILEVER (-5.0%) and GUINNESS (1.7%). Other sector indices that closed negative were Banking (1.0%) and Insurance (0.1%) on account of losses in GTBANK (-3.4%), UBA (-4.9%) and CUSTODIAN (0.5%).

Sentiments Stay WeakSentiments in the Nigerian Bourse was negative as 22 stocks advanced while 28 stocks declined to bring market breadth to 0.8x. CCNN (+10.1%), ETERNA (+10.0%) and FORTE OIL (+9.9%) topped the gainers chart while GLAXOSMITH (-5.0%), LIVESTOCK (-5.0%) and CONOIL (-5.0%) led the list of losing stocks. We believe that the bearish sentiment witnessed so far in the year may likely be sustained in the remaining two trading days. However, we do not rule out the likelihood a last minute jump on the 31st of December as traders close their books for the year.